Of course this is not the whole story. There are many passages I could wish you had written otherwise or omitted altogether. If I include none of my adverse criticisms in this letter that is because you have heard and rejected most of them already (rejected is perhaps too mild a word for your reaction on at least one occasion!). And even if all my objections were just (which is of course unlikely) the faults I think I find could only delay and impair appreciation: the substantial splendour of the tale can carry them all. Ubi plura nitent in carmine non ego paucis offendi maculis.
I congratulate you. All the long years you have spent on it are justified.
Yours,
Jack Lewis
Tolkien himself did not think it was flawless. But he told Stanley Unwin: ‘It is written in my life-blood, such as that is, thick or thin; and I can no other.’
1 ‘Who Goes Home’ was eventually published under the title The Great Divorce.
PART SIX
1949–1966: Success
CHAPTER I
SLAMMING THE GATES
It had taken twelve years to write The Lord of the Rings. By the time that he had finished it, Tolkien was not far from his sixtieth birthday.
Now of course he wanted to see the huge book in print. But he was not sure that he wanted Allen & Unwin to publish it, even though he had discussed it with them while it was being written, and they had encouraged him and shown approval of the manuscript. For he believed that he had now found someone who would publish it together with The Silmarillion.
Over the years he had become angry with Allen & Unwin for rejecting The Silmarillion in 1937 – though in truth they had not really rejected it at all; Stanley Unwin had merely said that it was not suitable as a sequel to The Hobbit. And Tolkien had come to believe that it was a case of ‘once rejected, always rejected’. Which was a pity, he thought, because he wanted to publish The Silmarillion. It was possible to say that The Lord of the Rings stood up as an independent story, but since it included obscure references to the earlier mythology it would be much better if the two books could be published together. But most of all he wanted to find an audience for the earlier book, and this seemed the ideal, perhaps the only, opportunity. So when Milton Waldman from the publishing house of Collins showed an interest in publishing both works, Tolkien was strongly inclined to abandon Allen & Unwin and join forces with him.
Waldman, a Catholic, had been introduced to Tolkien by Gervase Mathew, a scholar and Dominican priest who often attended meetings of the Inklings. When Waldman learnt that Tolkien had completed a lengthy sequel to that very successful book The Hobbit he expressed interest, and late in 1949 Tolkien sent him a bulky manuscript. But it was not The Lord of the Rings; it was The Silmarillion. The earlier mythological work, begun in 1917 as ‘The Book of Lost Tales’ was still incomplete, but Tolkien had begun work on it again while he was finishing The Lord of the Rings, and it was in a sufficiently ordered state for Waldman to read it. It was like nothing else Waldman had ever seen: a strange archaically-worded tale of elves, evil powers, and heroism. Some of it was typed, but much was in finely-lettered manuscript. Waldman told Tolkien that he thought it was remarkable, and he said that he wanted to publish it – providing Tolkien could finish it. Tolkien was delighted. Waldman had passed the first test: he had (provisionally) accepted The Silmarillion. He was invited down to Oxford by Tolkien, and was handed the manuscript of The Lord of the Rings. He took it on holiday and began to read it.
By the beginning of January 1950 he had almost finished it, and again he told Tolkien that he was delighted. ‘It is a real work of creation,’ he wrote, although he added that the length of the book worried him. But he was very hopeful that Collins would be able to put it into print. Indeed they were in a good position to do so. Most publishers, including Allen & Unwin, had been desperately short of paper since the war; however, Collins were not simply publishers but were also stationers, diary manufacturers, and printers, so they had a far greater allowance of paper than most firms. And as to the commercial viability of Tolkien’s lengthy mythological stories, the company’s chairman William Collins had already told Waldman that he would be happy to publish any fiction by the author of The Hobbit. In fact it was really the lucrative Hobbit that Collins wanted to acquire; while Tolkien, unhappy with the first post-war reprint of The Hobbit which had (for economy reasons) been shorn of its coloured plates, told Waldman that he would be happy to see it bought from Allen & Unwin and reissued according to his original intentions. He was also cross with Allen & Unwin for what he considered to be inadequate publicity for Farmer Giles of Ham, and he believed that Collins would be better at selling his books. So all seemed set fair for a working partnership between Tolkien and Collins.
There was, however, one point which Waldman wished to clear up. ‘I take it,’ he wrote to Tolkien, ‘that you have no commitment either moral or legal to Allen & Unwin.’ Tolkien replied: ‘I believe myself to have no legal obligation. There was a clause in the contract for The Hobbit providing for a two months’ consideration of my next book. That has been satisfied by (a) Stanley Unwin’s subsequent rejection of The Silmarillion and (b) by Farmer Giles. But I have had friendly personal relations with Stanley U. and especially with his second son Rayner. If all this constitutes a moral obligation, then I am under one. However, I shall certainly try to extricate myself, or at least The Silmarillion and all its kin, from the dilatory coils of A. and U. if I can – in a friendly fashion if possible.’
Tolkien had in fact worked himself into a state of mind in which he considered Allen & Unwin to be if not an enemy, then at least a very unreliable ally, while Collins seemed to represent all that he hoped for. The real position was much more complex, as events were to prove.
In February 1950 Tolkien wrote to Allen & Unwin to say that The Lord of the Rings was finished. But he did not exactly encourage them to show an interest. ‘My work has escaped from my control,’ he told them, ‘and I have produced a monster: an immensely long, complex, rather bitter, and rather terrifying romance, quite unfit for children (if fit for anybody); and it is not really a sequel to The Hobbit, but to The Silmarillion. Ridiculous and tiresome as you may think me, I want to publish them both – The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings. That is what I should like. Or I will let it all be. I cannot contemplate any drastic re-writing or compression. But I shall not have any just grievance (nor shall I be dreadfully surprised) if you decline so obviously unprofitable a proposition.’ Almost as a footnote he added that the two books together added up to the vast size of (in his estimate) more than a million words.
Stanley Unwin replied, admitting that the size of the books set a problem, but asking whether they could not be split into ‘three or four to some extent self-contained volumes?’ No, answered Tolkien, they could not; the only natural division was between the two works themselves. And he went even further in deliberately discouraging Unwin from showing any more interest. ‘I now wonder,’ he wrote, ‘whether many beyond my friends, not all of whom have endured to the end, would read anything so long. Please do not think I shall feel I have a just grievance if you decline to become involved.’ (‘I profoundly hope that he will let go without demanding the MS.,’ he wrote to Waldman.)
But Sir Stanley Unwin (who had received a knighthood just after the war) was not to be deterred so easily. He wrote to his son Rayner, who was studying at Harvard, and asked for his advice. Rayner replied: ‘The Lord of the Rings is a very great book in its own curious way and deserves to be produced somehow. I never felt the lack of a Silmarillion when reading it. But although he claims not to contemplate any drastic rewriting, etc., surely this is a case for an editor who would incorporate any really relevant material from The Silmarillion into The Lord of the Rings without increasing the already enormous bulk of the latter and, if feasible, even cutting it. Tolkien wouldn’t do it, but someone whom he would trust and who had sympathy (one of his sons?) might possibly do it. If this is not workable I would say publish The Lord of
the Rings as a prestige book, and after having a second look at it, drop The Silmarillion.’ Unwisely, Stanley Unwin sent a copy of this letter to Tolkien.
Tolkien was furious. He wrote to Unwin in April 1950 that Rayner’s letter confirmed his worst suspicions, ‘i.e. that you may be willing to take The Lord, but that is more than enough, and you do not want any trimmings; certainly not The Silmarillion which you have no intention of genuinely reconsidering. A rejection is after all a rejection, and remains valid. But the question of “dropping” The Silmarillion, after a discreet feint, and taking The Lord (edited) just does not arise. I have not offered, am not offering The Lord of the Rings to you, or anyone else, on such conditions – as surely I made plain before. I want a decision, yes or no: to the proposal I made: and not to any imagined possibility.’
Stanley Unwin replied on 17 April: ‘I am more sorry than I can say that you should feel it necessary to present me with an ultimatum, particularly one in connection with a manuscript which I have never seen in its final and complete form. As you demand an immediate “yes” or “no” the answer is “no”; but it might well have been yes given time and the sight of the typescript. With sorrow, I must perforce leave it at that.’
Tolkien had achieved his objective. Now he was free to publish with Collins. In the meantime he was moving house once again: Merton College had offered him 99 Holywell, an old house of much character with a large number of rooms, and he, Edith, and Priscilla moved there from Manor Road (which was only a few hundred yards away) in the early spring of 1950. Priscilla was now an undergraduate at Lady Margaret Hall, while Christopher, no longer living at home, was working as a freelance tutor in the English Faculty and completing a B. Litt.
Milton Waldman of Collins was quite certain in his own mind that his firm would publish Tolkien’s books. He arranged for Tolkien to come to the Collins offices in London, where he met William Collins and discussed the books with the production department. All seemed ready for an agreement to be signed and The Lord of the Rings to be put into print, likewise The Silmarillion, when it was finished, although Tolkien would still have to do a good deal of work on the latter book before it was in a publishable state. There was just one matter that remained to be settled: in May 1950 Waldman came to Oxford and told Tolkien that The Lord of the Rings ‘urgently wanted cutting’. Tolkien was dismayed. He told Waldman that he had ‘cut often and hard already’ but he would try again as soon as he found the time. Waldman in his turn was taken aback to learn that in Tolkien’s estimate The Silmarillion would, when completed, be almost as long as The Lord of the Rings; taken aback because the manuscript that he had read was nothing like so lengthy.
Tolkien’s estimate was in fact wildly inaccurate. The total length of The Silmarillion as then planned for publication would perhaps have been as much as one hundred and twenty-five thousand words, maybe less, but certainly nothing like as long as the half-million or so words of The Lord of the Rings. But Tolkien, who considered that The Silmarillion was as important as the later book, had come to believe that in consequence it was as long. Nor did he help matters at this juncture by handing Waldman several additional chapters from The Silmarillion without explaining how they fitted into the story. Waldman was a little puzzled by them. ‘They leave me rather bewildered,’ he said. Altogether, negotiations which should have been clear and simple were becoming confused.
At this point Waldman left for Italy, where he generally spent much of the year, only visiting London during the spring and autumn. His absence did not help. William Collins knew little about Tolkien’s books and had left the whole business in Waldman’s hands. Then Waldman became ill and his autumn trip to London was delayed. The consequence was that by the end of 1950, a year after the completion of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien found that he was no nearer to publishing it. Word of this percolated through to Stanley Unwin, who wrote to say that he still hoped ‘to have the privilege of being connected with its publication’. But Tolkien was not to be wooed back to Allen & Unwin so easily. His reply was friendly, but he made no reference to the book.
Much of Tolkien’s time was occupied by academic and administrative duties in Oxford, and by visits to Belgium (for philological work) and to Ireland (as an examiner); and soon another year had passed with nothing further achieved towards publication. Late in 1951 he wrote a long letter to Milton Waldman, outlining in about ten thousand words the structure of his entire mythology, and hoping by this to convince Waldman that the books were interdependent and indivisible. But by March 1952 he had still not signed an agreement with Collins, and The Silmarillion was still not ready for publication. William Collins was in South Africa, Waldman was in Italy, and the price of paper had soared. Tolkien (who had really been as much responsible for the delay as anyone) wrote to Collins saying that his time had been wasted. Either they must publish The Lord of the Rings immediately, or he would send the manuscript back to Allen & Unwin. The result was inevitable, for William Collins did not like ultimata any more than did Stanley Unwin. He came back from South Africa, read Tolkien’s letter, and replied on 18 April 1952: ‘I am afraid we are frightened by the very great length of the book which, with the present cost of paper, does mean a very big outlay’ and he told Tolkien that it did indeed seem best for him to send the manuscript back to Allen & Unwin.
But would Allen & Unwin have him back?
On 22 June 1952 Tolkien wrote to Rayner Unwin, now returned to England and working for his father’s firm: ‘As for The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, they are where they were. The one finished, the other still unfinished (or unrevised), and both gathering dust. I have rather modified my views. Better something than nothing! Although to me all are one, and The Lord of the Rings would be better far (and eased) as part of the whole, I would gladly consider the publication of any part of the stuff. Years are becoming precious. What about The Lord of the Rings? Can anything be done about that, to unlock gates I slammed myself?’
CHAPTER II
A BIG RISK
Rayner Unwin did not need to be asked twice. He suggested that Tolkien should send the manuscript of The Lord of the Rings to Allen & Unwin at once, by registered post. But Tolkien had only one typescript of the book in its final and revised form, and he did not want to consign that to the post. He wanted to hand it over in person – and, as it happened, that was not possible for some weeks. During August he was on holiday in Ireland, and in the same month he visited George Sayer, a friend of C. S. Lewis, who taught at Malvern College and who often visited the Inklings. While Tolkien was staying with Sayer in Worcestershire, his host recorded him reading and singing from The Hobbit and from the typescript of The Lord of the Rings, which he had brought with him. When he listened to these recordings, Tolkien was ‘much surprised to discover their effectiveness as recitations, and (if I may say so) my own effectiveness as a narrator’. Many years later, after Tolkien’s death, the tapes made on this occasion were issued on long-playing gramophone records.
Tolkien had never before encountered a tape-recorder at close quarters – he pretended to regard Sayer’s machine with great suspicion, pronouncing the Lord’s Prayer in Gothic into the microphone to cast out any devils that might be lurking within. But after the recording sessions at Malvern he was so impressed with the device that he acquired a machine to use at home, and began to amuse himself by making further tapes of his work. Some years previously he had written what proved to be a very effective ‘radio play’. Entitled The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, Beorhthelm’s Son, it is in effect a ‘sequel’ to the Anglo-Saxon poem The Battle of Maldon, for it recounts an imaginary episode after that battle when two servants of the duke Beorhtnoth come in the darkness to retrieve their master’s corpse from the battlefield. Written in a modern equivalent of Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse, it marks the passing of the heroic age, whose characteristics are exemplified and contrasted in the youthful romantic Torhthelm and the practical old farmer Tidwald. The Home coming of Beorhtnoth was in existence by 1945
, but it was not published until 1953, in which year it appeared in Essays and Studies. It was never performed on a stage, but a year after publication it was transmitted on the BBC Third Programme. Tolkien was deeply irritated by this radio production, which ignored the alliterative metre and delivered the verse as if it were iambic pentameters. He himself recorded a version that was much more to his own satisfaction on the tape-recorder in his study at home in which he not only played both parts but improvised some dextrous sound-effects. Although made purely for personal amusement, this recording is a fine demonstration of Tolkien’s not inconsiderable talents as an actor. He had shown these talents before the war, when in 1938 and 1939 he had impersonated Chaucer in the ‘Summer Diversions’ arranged in Oxford by Nevill Coghill and John Masefield. On these occasions he had recited from memory the Nun’s Priest’s Tale and (the next year) The Reeve’s Tale. He was not enthusiastic about drama as an art-form, considering it to be tiresomely anthropocentric and therefore restricting. But he did not extend this dislike to the dramatic recitation of verse, in which category he presumably placed his own Beorhtnoth.
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